Silicon Graphics Fan Control Board

[Corduroy]

My dad just went to a car show and swap-meet recently and picked up an interesting piece of computer equipment for me.

He bought a massive fan assembly that has nine 120mm fans on it. They were mounted to this assembly in three rows of three fans. All the fans are plugged into a Silicon Graphics Computer Systems circuit board which seems to have been made for this application. The SG board also has a serial cable attached to it that runs to a male end serial port on the end of the framework that the fans are attached to. The fans all have a white, brown, black, and red wire running out of them. The SG board also has a socket that looks like the female end of a printer cable, but much smaller. I'm guessing that this was some sort of power socket, as the fans are not otherwise getting any power from the DC adapter at the end of this huge assembly.

There is a number of the SGCS board that reads "Assy NO 030-0941-005" I have looked all over Google for this number along with Silicon Graphics, but I am unable to determine what this piece of equipment once belonged to. The fans are marked "NMB Model: 0475KL-04W-B46" They are 12 Volt and 0.90 Amps.

If you know if/how I could wire these fans to work in a new system, or how I could get them to work with the fancy Silicon Graphics control board that they came with, please shed some light on this situation.

[Corduroy]

Here is a picture of the fan tray/fan assembly. The green box is around where the control board goes and the red box is around the serial port.

[Corduroy]

Here is a picture of the Silicon Graphics Fan Control Board.

[Corduroy]

Here is a pic of one of the fans. (What am I going to do with 9 of these?) Thanks Dad!

[Wiggo]

That would be from a rack mounted server. I'd be sure to power them from a PSU only but yes they can be used again though I'm not sure about the control unit. The red wire will be the 12v+ and the black wire 12v- what the other two wires would be for I couldn't say except that one would be monitoring (maybe both). :smokin:
<center>:cheers:</center>

[Corduroy]

Thanks Wiggo. I was pretty sure that the red and black would have their standard assignments, but the two other wires are what are confusing me. Usually white would be the tach, but then what would the brown be?

[Corduroy]

Can I get a cord that will power this Silicon Graphics card? I would like to be able to use all of these fans in concert and see if I can get them to be control by a serial port.

[Wiggo]

The connection would probably be a SG special so that would cause difficulties. :(
You'd probably have to find someone experienced in rack mounted systems to be sure though. :smokin:
<center>:cheers:</center>